Phoenix

What it is

Fire-tag legendary forged by merging two level-20 fire-tag weapons. Wraps the ship in a continuous 360° aura that ticks fire damage to every enemy inside its radius, with a flaming Phoenix outline rendered behind the player. Higher levels grow the aura, tick faster, and brighten the wings.

Merge recipe

Parent A	Parent B	Result
Any L20 fire-tag weapon	Any L20 fire-tag weapon	Phoenix (L1)

Both parent slots must carry the fire damage tag. The resulting legendary starts at level 1 and levels up via the normal level-up pool from L1 to L20. See legendary damage baseline for why a fresh legendary already hits as hard as a non-legendary at L20.

Stats

Raw spec values, before the global damage multiplier, low-level buff, legendary baseline, and horizontal modifiers. See weapons for the level-scaling formula and damage multiplier curve for the multipliers stacked on top.

Stat	L1	L10	L20
Damage per tick	1100	1100	1100
Fire rate (ticks/s)	3.00	4.35	5.85
Aura radius	240	348	468
Acquire range	240	348	468
Projectile size	0	0	0
Travel range multiplier	1.0×	1.0×	1.0×
Warmup	0.00 s	0.00 s	0.00 s

Identity

Field	Value
Family	Sweep
Rarity	Legendary
Damage tag	Fire
Secondary damage tag	Fire
Merge parents	Fire + Fire
Scaling curve	Linear
Target mode	Closest
Collision mode	Pierce all
Area mode	Splash
Behavior	Phoenix aura
Can hit destructibles	Yes
Firing group	No

Behavior

• The aura is centered on the ship and covers a full 360° circle out to the aura radius. There is no aimed beam or projectile — the weapon ticks damage to every enemy inside the radius on each tick.
• Each tick applies the per-tick fire damage to every enemy inside the aura simultaneously, with pierce-all collision (one tick can hit any number of enemies). See collision modes.
• Tick cadence is governed by fireRate: 3 ticks/s at L1 (one tick every ~0.333 s) up to ~5.85 ticks/s at L20 (one tick every ~0.171 s).
• Acquire range and aura radius scale together at the same rate (+12 px per level), so the targeting footprint and the damage footprint stay aligned.
• Target mode is closest, but because the aura is a circular sweep the target choice only matters for VFX orientation and signal hooks — every enemy inside the aura takes the tick regardless of which one is the targeted enemy. See target modes.
• The aura damages destructible props in addition to enemies.
• Both the primary and secondary damage tags are fire, so any artifact or effect keyed on fire hits double-fires. See damage tags.
• No warmup — the aura starts ticking immediately at run start.
• Travel range multiplier is 1.0× and projectile size is 0 — the weapon has no projectiles, only the aura footprint defined by blast radius.
• firingGroup: false excludes Phoenix from the shared firing-group cadence used by stacked group-fire weapons; ticks run on their own internal cooldown.
• Area mode is splash, so horizontal area modifiers expand the aura radius.

Scaling

• Damage is flat — it does not grow with level. All damage growth comes from the layered multipliers, not the spec base.
• Fire rate grows linearly: +0.15 ticks/s per level above 1, from 3.0/s at L1 to 5.85/s at L20.
• Aura radius and acquire range grow linearly: +12 px per level above 1, from 240 px at L1 to 468 px at L20.
• Travel range multiplier, projectile size, and warmup are constant across all levels.
• The damage stat is multiplied by the global damage curve (1.00× at L1 → 7.50× at L20), the low-level damage buff (+30% at L1 decaying to 0% at L7), and the legendary baseline multiplier of 7.50×.
• Horizontal damage modifiers add another +4% per step on top, and horizontal fire-rate modifiers add +10% per step.
• Area horizontal modifiers grow the aura radius (area mode: splash).
• Because the damage tag is fire for both the primary and secondary slot, both horizontal fire-damage tracks and any fire-tag affixes apply.

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EXTRACT-CANDIDATE flags (shared facts not yet on a canonical page, or worth promoting):

• Phoenix-aura behavior. Phoenix’s behavior: 'phoenix_aura' is a self-centered 360° sweep that ticks damage to every enemy inside a circular radius on a fixed cadence. No canonical page describes how aura behaviors compose tick-rate × radius × pierce-all and how they differ from persistent ground flame zones (which are spawned by hits, not centered on the ship). Belongs on a behavior reference or an aura concept page.
• Aura vs flame zone. Phoenix is a tick-on-cadence aura centered on the ship; it does not leave any persistent ground zone behind. Trailblazer and Carpet Bomber leave persistent fire patches at hit/impact sites. The flame zones page does not currently distinguish ship-centered auras from spawned ground zones.
• Aura radius = blast radius field. The aura footprint is stored in blastRadius even though there is no blast detonation. Field name overload — blastRadius doubles as “aura radius” for sweep-family weapons. Worth a glossary note on the area modes page.
• Sweep family. family: 'sweep' is shared by aura-style weapons that deal damage in a self-centered region on a tick cadence. Currently only Phoenix uses this family in the legendary set. No canonical family/behavior page covers it.
• firingGroup flag. firingGroup: false opts Phoenix out of the shared firing-group cadence system used to coordinate ticks across stacked group-fire weapons. Plasma Mortar also sets this. Not documented anywhere in the wiki.
• Acquire range as VFX-only on auras. For a 360° aura with pierce-all and splash area mode, targetMode and acquireRange only matter for VFX orientation and signal targeting — the damage application is uniform across the radius. Worth noting on the target modes page.
• No-warmup legendary. Phoenix has warmupSec: 0.0, so it begins ticking immediately at run start with no first-shot delay. The warmup page lists warmup values per weapon but does not flag zero-warmup weapons as a category.
• Secondary damage tag = primary. Phoenix sets both damageTag and secondaryDamageTag to fire, doubling tag-signal emissions on hit. The collision resolver fires both tag signals, so every fire-tag artifact procs twice per hit. Same double-tag pattern applies to bullet+bullet, bomb+bomb, energy+energy, fire+fire legendaries.
• Tick rate balance pass v5.156.3. Phoenix fire rate was halved (6.0→3.0 base, 0.30→0.15 scaling) for VFX-overwhelm reasons rather than DPS targeting. The scaling curves page does not flag aura tick-rate vs VFX-density as a balance axis.
• Legendary VFX scale rule. Spatial parameters on legendaries (acquireRange, blastRadius, etc.) are ×5 their base-weapon counterparts; postFxSec is ×2 only. Currently only documented as a comment at the top of the legendaries source file. Worth promoting to a concept page.